Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – A pair of disturbing Philip Ridley one acts takes us straight into the heart of darkness

• By drediman
• February 2, 2016
• No Comments

I recently had a chance to catch a pair of harrowing one acts by Philip Ridley playing in repertory at HERE Arts Center – Tonight with Donny Stixx and Dark Vanilla Jungle. Collectively billed as “Tonight/Jungle”, these two solo performances took me to places that were so pitch black that I was left breathless for minutes after the performances had ended. Even if you saw Mr. Ridley’s excellent sci-fi shocker Mercury Fur (so memorably staged earlier this season by the New Group) and think you know what to expect from him, these two portraits of young, unhinged lives are still guaranteed to bulldoze themselves into your skull and chill your soul.

Perhaps the better of the two plays is Dark Vanilla Jungle (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED) – the winner of the Scotsman Fringe First Award in 2013. The play, which tracks a teenage girl’s slippery fall from grace into a world of delusion, features some of the most striking writing and imagery I’ve yet encountered from Mr. Ridley. Robyn Kerr’s astonishing performance as Andrea is one I won’t soon forget. She’s equally vulnerable and scarily dangerous as she tries to navigate her crumbling adolescence. It’s one of the performances of the season and I eagerly look forward to what she does next. Dark Vanilla Jungle is directed with precision and utter control by Paul Takacs. The last ten minutes of the play are perhaps the most disturbing couple of minutes I’ve spent in the theater since, well, the almost unwatchable gruesome conclusion of Mr. Ridley’s own Mercury Fur.

Although not as multifarious as Dark Vanilla Jungle, Mr. Ridley’s Tonight with Donny Stixx (RECOMMENDED)  – which recently had its world premiere at the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe Festival – still packs quite the punch. Like the other play, Tonight with Donny Stixx, which is about an unstable boy’s quest for stardom, is a meditation on the delicacy of the teenage psyche and the destructive effects of self-delusion. Suffice to say, when the boy is faced with the reality of things, some stuff hits the fan. As Donny, Harry Farmer is giving a relentless, thrilling performance that ably and thankfully distracts you from the somewhat formulaic trajectory of the story. It’s a highly skilled performance and I look forward to seeing more of him. Like Mr. Takacs, Frances Loy helms Tonight with Donny Stixx in a way that maximizes the impact of the storytelling.

Both plays are designed by the same excellent team. Dante Olivia Smith is responsible for the powerful lighting, which she so brilliantly calibrates with each of these disturbed teens’ psyches. Kudos also to Toby Jaguar Algya, whose soundscapes create an atmosphere of mounting tension and paranoia that really got under my skin. The deceptively simple set is by Steven C. Kemp.

TONIGHT/JUNGLE – TWO PLAYS BY PHILIP RIDLEY
Off-Broadway, Play
HERE
Each play is 1 hour, 20 minutes (without an intermission)
In repertory through February 7